We at On Site Archery have had a lot of people purchase their own equipment. Of course, the most mysterious part of getting one’s own equipment is purchasing arrows.
Why?
Most people new to archery think there is some way to simply purchase an arrow that is ready to shoot with their new bow. Unfortunately this is not the case because in order to get a particular archer with a particular bow to shoot arrows truly straight, a set of arrows needs to be assembled to fit the overall archer’s system. This is a dynamic process that takes many adjustments and decisions, not a static process in which one can simply pick an arrow online and purchase it, ready to shoot. Sometimes people get frustrated when they purchase a new riser and limbs, but it doesn’t improve their shooting because they still use the same arrows. I’ve even seen people get frustrated because two people purchase their own equipment, without arrows, and one person starts to shoot better than ever while the other shoots worse and wonders why. The fact is that until a person gets their own arrows and fits them to how s/he shoots, it’s a matter of pure luck as to whether s/he shoots better or worse than before.
An arrow has the following components:
- The shaft.
- The tip. This is the tip of the arrow that hits a target first. Glue is used to attach the tip to the shaft.
- Vanes. These are what most people think of as the ”feathers” of an arrow, though most often feathers are not used.
- Glue or tape to stick the vanes onto the shaft.
- An insert, either separate from the nock or part of the nock. An insert is the piece that fits into the arrow shaft end, allowing a nock to be attached to the shaft.
- A nock.
While you can purchase a fully assembled arrow, doing so is generally for beginner archers that don’t have their own equipment. When you buy your own equipment, the next step is to assemble your own arrows.
In order to assemble an arrow that works well with a particular archer’s overall system, all the above components need to be chosen, and they all must work together, along with the bow and the archer, to produce an arrow flight that is straight. The components themselves all add up to form the static properties of an arrow; how the arrow flies through the air when force is applied to it forms the dynamic aspects of an arrow’s flight. If you have two different archers shoot the very same bow and the very same arrow, the static properties of the arrow do not change because it’s the same arrow. However, the dynamic properties of the arrow’s flight do change because each archer will shoot differently. The very same arrow using the very same bow may be right for one archer and likely not for another. This is why that no matter what components are chosen, customization to fit the archer is required to get an ideal arrow flight.
When you shoot an arrow you want it to fly straight. You don’t want it to fly:
- With an erratic motion, such as up and down (known as porpoising), or in a circular motion as it makes its way to the target.
- To the left.
- To the right.
- Higher or lower than intended.
The Flight of an Arrow
When an arrow is shot, a lot happens. Some of what happens can be seen by a naked eye, and some not. Here are a few of the major events that occur:
- The string is pulled back, which places potential energy into the system. The further the string is pulled back (i.e., the longer one’s draw length), the more potential energy exists that can then be converted to kinetic energy, moving the arrow upon release. The higher the limb weight, the more energy as well.
- The string is released, converting the potential energy stored in the system to kinetic energy. The arrow receives most of this kinetic energy, causing it to fly through the air. Some of the energy will transfer to the bow, the limbs, and even the string. When you get taught to never dry fire a bow, the potential energy being transferred to the bow is the reason why; instead of the potential energy being applied to the arrow in the form of kinetic energy, the bow receives it all and it may not be able to handle it without breaking or hurting the archer.
- When the arrow begins moving after the string is released, it moves forward but also bends. This is because a lot of force is suddenly applied to the arrow, and there is a tip on the arrow that has mass. The force the string applies to the arrow is applied on the tail end of the arrow, and the tip is on the front end. In between these two ends is the arrow shaft, which has been designed with a certain flexibility. Depending upon this flexibility, the shaft will bend as it is compressed between the tail that has the string’s force applied to it, and the tip that doesn’t want to move due to inertia. If the shaft is extremely flexible, it will bend a lot, and if the shaft isn’t as flexible, it won’t bend as much. If the tip has a high mass, it will cause the shaft to bend more than if the tip has a lower mass.
- You can already see in this limited discussion that there are multiple variables at play: the force applied to the arrow, the mass of the arrow tip, and the flexibility of the arrow shaft.
- If you are a right-handed archer, a more flexible arrow shaft or a higher mass tip will cause the flight of the arrow to move right, and a less flexible arrow or lower mass tip will cause the flight of the arrow to move left. Why? Because if the arrow bends more upon release, it is forced to bend around the riser. As it bends around the riser, it heads to the right. If instead the arrow bends less, it won’t bend around the riser as much, and this lack of bending causes the arrow to fly more to the left, as if it is being pushed away from the riser. For left-handed archers, the directions are opposite—an arrow that bends more will fly to the left, and an arrow that bends less will fly to the right.
- We call arrows that fly to the right (left for left-handed archers) weak arrows, and arrows that fly to the left (right for left-handed archers) stiff arrows.
- Ideal arrows don’t fly left or right—they fly straight. Getting this ideal flight is a matter of balancing the properties of the archery system. It is a dynamic system because all of these variables are combined and cause the arrow to fly a particular way. One can purchase a very stiff arrow shaft but then attach a very heavy tip, and the heavy tip will cause the stiff shaft to bend more upon release, possibly causing the arrow to fly weak (to the right for a right-handed archer and to the left for a left-handed archer). Even though it’s a stiff shaft, a heavy tip can cause a statically stiff shaft to bend enough to push the arrow to the right, which means the arrow then behaves in flight as dynamically weak.
- We say we tune arrows when we assemble arrows and shoot them, over and over, and change them in ways to progress toward getting a straighter and straighter arrow flight.
- A tuning session involves having the archer shoot arrows, while the archer or someone else observes the flight of the arrow. If the arrows fly weak, changes are made to stiffen up the dynamic flight; if the arrows fly stiff, changes are made to weaken the dynamic flight. For instance, if the arrows are flying weak one can:
- Choose tips with less mass, or adjust the tip so that it has less mass. A tip with less mass causes the shaft to bend less, which creates a stiffer dynamic flight.
- Cut the shaft, because a shorter shaft is stiffer than a longer shaft.
- Try stiffer shafts.
- Try heavier vanes. Adding weight to the tail end of an arrow stiffens the dynamic flight, meaning it has the opposite effect of adding weight to the front end of the arrow.
- Use limbs with a lighter draw weight.
- Use the same limbs, but adjust the limb bolts outward so they have less draw weight.
- The archer can, theoretically at least, anchor with less of a draw length. I wouldn’t normally recommend this unless the archer’s anchor happens to be too far back, needing correction.
- I mentioned changing one’s anchor for a larger reason: Even if you tune and get everything perfect, your form will change over time and cause the arrows to then fly weaker or stiffer, which then causes you to have to retune your system. Oftentimes this can be done by adjusting your limb bolts to cause more or less force on your arrows as you release, bringing your arrow flight back to the ideal. The important takeaway here is that one’s system constantly evolves, and you have to stay on top of it to continue having ideal arrow flight.
- One reason I’m writing this article is because, just last night as I shot with my daughter Emma, I noticed my arrows flying a bit downward and to the left, so to correct this I had to move my nock points slightly down and I adjusted my limb bolts to apply more force to the arrow (therefore causing them to fly weaker than they were). After a few adjustments, boom—they were flying straight again, and this was only a few weeks after tuning. It’s a continual process!
- When we tune arrows we do something unusual: We shoot arrows without any vanes. This is called bareshaft tuning and we do this because we get a better read on the true flight of an arrow. Vanes smooth out the flight of an arrow, so shooting without vanes allows us to view issues with the arrow’s flight that would disappear if vanes were present. We also shoot arrows with vanes, but the bareshafts tell us a story about our arrows that we wouldn’t otherwise hear.
So, we purchase arrow components, we assemble them, we shoot some without vanes, and we tweak them to get them to fly straight. The tweaks involve adding/removing weight from the tip, trying shafts with different spines, cutting the shaft, adjusting limb weight, and other tricks to get arrows flying as straight as possible. For an archer without a lot of experience that purchases their first equipment, this tuning doesn’t have to be too exact—as long as the arrow flies relatively straight it’s good enough. For a more advanced archer shooting higher scores, every flaw in arrow flight that can be removed means more consistency, and consistency in archery is king.